I think there is too much bias towards cannons, and benefits which pretty much makes low player games unfair towards other weapons.

The cannon tech tree path offers the far most benefits, including motar, heap howitzer shells, heap AA flak and penetrative weapons such as needle. No other weapon path offers this diversity, and since the 3.1.1 balance changes showing yet more favoritism to cannons, there is no benefit of other weapons.

Since cannons are also an all rounder weapon, they effective against structures, units and borgs making a mix and match pointless.

Since there are tons of benefits to cannons, there really is no point in any other tech research path, and why does only cannons lead to the only penetrative weapon. I think it's bias and skewed.

0. You need to provide a lot more proof for your statements. The effectiveness of anything cannot be proved by only analyzing the tech tree and weapon modifiers, actual strength of the items needs to be taken into account. The same statements were true in 3.1.0, yet cannons were known to be barely useful.

Spoiler:

I wish we had replays.

1. Mortars and howitzers are not part of the cannon branch; they branch away very early (after cannon damage mk1), they have a separate set of upgrades to pursue. On the contrary, MRAs and ripples (and later seraphs and archangels) use the same set of upgrades as other rockets and missiles (minipods-lancers-TKs and later scourges, respectively), and you also have an ultimate weapon against buildings in the rocket branch, namely bunker buster, also available for free.

2. AA weapons are available in rocket branch as well, and i cannot say that the free cannon branch AA is better than the free rocket branch AA, specially when it comes to the excellent use of Sunburst as air-to-air. Also, rocket branch provides a nice T3 AA kit, which railguns fail to provide. And the latter is actually very important, because T3 VTOLs are a major threat (slightly smoothed out by the universal availability of the Stormbringer).

3. Rail guns are penetrating, but seraphs are indirect-always-hit (where indirect provides hitting stuff that cannot see you and fire back, and also perfect unblockable fire concentration) with very nice DPS, which makes the latter kick ass even of railguns on certain terrains (assuming you do play maps with terrain, otherwise balance is undefined and unsupported).

4. Cannons are not effective against cyborgs, as in you cannot survive with pure cannons against pure cyborgs. A cyborg-intensive mix is the right counter against cannons, at least on the early phase: not only they win in direct combat, but also harass effectively. You would just need less machineguns in the mix, but you cannot go on without having at least some. At around heavy cannon and twin assault cannon timing, cyborgs become less effective in general, so you'd probably manage somehow, but you won't survive till then unless you have some AP weapon around. Mortars might be good against cyborgs, but MRAs are even more so, as they allow cobra hover hit-and-run against most cyborgs due both speed and range being better. Also, at HC/TAC phase, your biggest problem would be dealing with tracked tanks, when you suddenly find out that you have no good weapon at all (!) against them, to compensate their huge HP/$ boost.

Well considering Cannons have a an all rounder damage modifier, I mentioned they were effective against borgs,but should've worded it as being more effective than say the rocket path.

Cannons generally offer decent splash damage as well as needles which can be quite devasting and can make the game one sided.

sunburst AA is useless, and you won't hold off against vtols long enough with them until laser AA, and making vtols sunburst units is going to make you fall behind in other units.

Whirlwind is probably the best and effective early AA weapon available, but upgrades only because available after certain cannon upgrades (Why?)

Also if we take into account the range of weapons such as hyper Velocity Cannon, which is greater than rockets, machine guns and other early weapons. You can't really make use of the Hit and run of which this type of weapon is meant to be, and no matter the propulsion you use. The Cannons are always going to have a 100% plus damage modifier.

Really, there is no other need to use any other weapons. Absolutely no absolutely point. All the benefits come from the cannons tech tree, Rockets, only have a good damage modifer against tracks, Machines guns against borgs and wheels. While bam, the unfathomable bias of cannons shows it superiority against with its majestic damage modifers. Which of course is totally balance, so is penetrative needles / rail guns, which a good range, all rounder damage modifier and splash damage.

Argument (0) still holds. You're saying cannons are equal against everything, but it proves nothing: they might be equally weak against everything.

Let us see how you counter flamer cyborg rush on minute 10 with just cannons. Let us see how the low-DPS hyper velocity cannon blocks hit-and-run at tank killer phase, considering that you still need a stronger weapon in your cannon army to hold against direct assault and cyborgs. Give a proof that your opponent is not just stupid, but it's actually a balance flaw. Show us how you did everything you could to counter pure cannons, but it was not enough. Before any proof at all is provided, this talk is pointless; vague words will not suffice.

My experience of cannons is this:Early game cannons are slightly weak, especially against cyborgs. The main strategy with cannons usually seems to be surviving until you get twin assault cannons, which absolutely tear apart everything (including cyborgs). In fact, twin assault cannon is the main reason I prefer the cannon line.

NoQ wrote:Let us see how you counter flamer cyborg rush on minute 10 with just cannons.

Right. Thats exactly what happend to me yesterday as i wanted to test a new 3-player map. I am using cannons in early games very rarely. And just for fun i wanted to see yesterday, what will be happend. After 9:30 minutes my 12 viper halftracks light cannons (upgrade mk2) were on their way to base 2. On the way i met 4! flamer-cyborgs. Must not explain in details what happend. I lost the game against strong Nulbots. This whole balance discussion about cannons depends on many factors. But i know-in future i will never try to attack only with cannons in early games without a mix with mg or flamers. It is like NoQ said-never think, that your opponent is stupid. It is like in chess. You have to calculate, that your opponent will make the best move and you have to be prepared for this.

In case the WZ-game ends in a draw , the game winner will be determined by penalty shoot-out.

Also, rockets can really take advantage of their long range in the late game because the path offers both anti-borg with Seraph and anti-tank with Scourge. Tiger tracks of both will destroy pretty much any mix of units in the late game, and Archangel missiles are better than howitzer.

Warzone 2100 is love, life.Member of the BDC clan and adept at multiplayer battles. Feel free to PM me questions about multiplayer.

I once actually managed to defeat an army of ~60 cyborgs by sending ~15 medium bodied tanks straight into the hoard . But they where cheap low tech cyborgs anyway with few flamers, plus I was using tracked cobra bodied medium cannons.

Then you can also got heap howitzer shells after so many cannon damage upgrades

You also get heap AA flak after x amount of cannon upgrades.

And also needles which are penetrative considering the game lasts that long, and structures don't really hold out well against cannons.

One more thing, hit and run with early rockets are hard against Hyper velocity cannon as it has a better range than lancers. You can just keep your distance. Same with any other weapon around the same time.

The Overlord wrote:Also, rockets can really take advantage of their long range in the late game because the path offers both anti-borg with Seraph and anti-tank with Scourge. Tiger tracks of both will destroy pretty much any mix of units in the late game, and Archangel missiles are better than howitzer.

Half tracked rail gun, with rail borgs would kill that mix and tear it up in minutes.

NoQ wrote:Argument (0) still holds. You're saying cannons are equal against everything, but it proves nothing: they might be equally weak against everything.

Let us see how you counter flamer cyborg rush on minute 10 with just cannons. Let us see how the low-DPS hyper velocity cannon blocks hit-and-run at tank killer phase, considering that you still need a stronger weapon in your cannon army to hold against direct assault and cyborgs. Give a proof that your opponent is not just stupid, but it's actually a balance flaw. Show us how you did everything you could to counter pure cannons, but it was not enough. Before any proof at all is provided, this talk is pointless; vague words will not suffice.

The cyborg rush is also true about rockets. Just grasping at straws. Hyper velocity cannon is available far earlier than Tank killer, and has the range advantage of other weapons.

As for Seraph, they're only really good against cyborgs, they'd lose against any sort of tanks except maybe wheels and hovers.

@NoQ: as you said, properly microed rockets win against twin assault cannon, at least in low oil, because its main weakness is slightly short range. However, twin assault cannon simply has the hp to take punishment and it's also fairly fast, especially on mantis, so as long as you have something to accompany them, you can simply push forward and anything stupid enough to stay within range will be blasted. You can for example mix twin assault cannon mantis tracks and hpv cannon borgs, or alternatively support with incendiary mortar. Especially in small maps the borgs will draw fire until the enemy is cornered. The problem is not so much that it cannot be countered, but it's simply very versatile and has serious firepower against everything.

Amzo2000:Argument (0) still holds. Current balance is based on much more careful reasoning than what you provide here, and to enforce a change, you need to do more work to provide the proof that the balance problem actually exists.

I already explained why the proof is not enough. A weapon with modifiers of 1% against everything may be overpowered, and a weapon with modifiers of 1000% against everything may be completely useless, so what? Either provide actual calculations, or defeat every existing player in the world with pure cannons. For example, when machineguns used to be overpowered, Wisler exposed this problem by defeating absolutely every player with pure machineguns, even while fighting against halftracks and tracks (with modifiers <= 60%).

I'm gonna refrain from further discussing your statements here unless they change from something like this this to something like that, if you know what i mean.